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Raising the Mind, Warming the Heart

by Father Seraphim Rose of Platina

Editor's Note: The following text was transcribed from a
tape of a a "table-top discussion" at the St. Herman
Monastery, Platina, California, in 1977. Since Fr. Seraphim's
talk was impromptu and informal, a transcription of it is of
course more "colloquial" and less "polished"
than his carefully composed writings. This talk also differs from
the main body of his writings in that it was directed to a
specific group of people: young American converts who wanted to
dedicate their lives to serving God, some of them as Orthodox
missionaries.

The theme of Fr. Seraphims talk is the basic message
that he reiterated throughout the latter part of his life: that
the faith of Orthodox Christians must be living, warm and deep
within the heart, rather than cold, hard and external. He
realized the importance of this idea through his long and arduous
years as a missionary, which gave him a penetrating awareness of
the needs of contemporary Orthodox Christians and dangers they
face.

1. Faith and Reason

The writings of the Russian philosopher Ivan Kireyevsky
contain some basic ideas which are very apropos for us today. The
usual argument between faith and reason, he wrote, is not
correct. Reason is such a thing that it must be raised up to a
higher level, and this is what the Orthodox Church tries to give.
By itself, reason does not offer any more than an understanding
of this two-dimensional, corporeal realm, with which most of the
critics and scholars of the West are occupying themselves. There
is something, however, above this. According to Western thinking,
if you go "above" this, you usually have to deny reason
and "jump into the dark." In Orthodoxy this is not so,
for the reason itself is so exposed to Truth that it begins to be
elevated above itself.

We will examine how this point relates to contemporary
Orthodox Christians, and especially to missionary-minded
converts.

2. Missionary Fervor

There is much discussion in the Orthodox world about the need
for people in the West to be converted, for more services in
English, for overcoming ethnicism in the Church. This positive
missionary fervor is a very good sign (except, of course, when
negative comments are made). In fact, as Archimandrite
Constantine (of Jordanville) often said, the best time for
missionary activity is right now, because the less Christian
America becomes, the more the Orthodox mission increases. Our
positive missionary fervor, however, must be guided by an
awareness of the times in which we live, so that we will know how
to save our souls and save others.

It is natural for those who are in the Church of Christ,
realizing what it means to be Orthodox, not to be satisfied with
just having it for themselves. Knowing that Orthodoxy is the
Truth for all peoples, they want it for others: for their own
friends and relatives, and for whoever may have their heart open
to it. Yet, as we look about us today, we see the Orthodox Church
so hemmed in by Communist persecution in one place and by
worldliness in another. The situation is, of course, worse in the
West, which is occupied by worldliness. Under Communism, one can
suffer for Christ and at least bring something good out of that;
whereas, under the influence of worldliness, Orthodox
Christianity loses its savor and the believers become just like
anybody else. In the latter case, many Protestants put many
Orthodox to shame, since they have fervor and love for Christ
without even knowing what the Church of Christ is.

These situations, however, should not cause the slightest
difference in our missionary fervor. (And the same may be said
for the situation, faced by many English-speaking converts, of
having to attend services in a foreign language.) We must
remember that Christ expects from us not missionary fervor, but a
changed life and a warm heart. The missionary fervor is on a
secondary level, on the external side. We see numerous examples
of people with great missionary fervor who did not place first
the internal side of changing themselves, warming their hearts
and raising their minds to a higher level, as Kireyevsky
describes. These people became "burnt out" and
fruitless, and some of them even left the Church.

3. Setting Priorities

How does one begin to place first things first? We can learn
from problems in contemporary Orthodoxy which show the results of
setting wrong priorities.

Our Brotherhood is in contact with many people in Greece, and
we receive very heartfelt letters from them. They tell us
important things about the present state of Grcece, where, since
the 1920's, there has been a division between the new calendar
Church, which goes the way of the world, and the old calendar
Church, which wants to he faithful to the Holy Fathers. Lately,
the old calendar Church has been getting some influential
converts, and they have a fervent missionary spirit similar to
that of our young Americans who want to open up Orthodoxy to
their fellow countrymen.

Where can this fervor lead? In Greece, fervor for the canons
and the Holy Fathers has produced some extremely unpleasant, bad
results. Group after group begins to cut themselves off because
they consider the others not fervent enough. Each one accuses the
others of not emphasizing the right things, of not having the
proper relationship with other Orthodox Churches, etc.

There is one tragic case of a very sophisticated Greek
theologian who left his jurisdiction because, in the altar of one
of its churches, there was an icon of the Holy Trinity showing
God the Father as the Ancient of Days. "Uncanonical, "
he said, "the canons are against it!" His action
indicates that something was not being placed first. It is
strange not only because this man was very learned, but also
because he was living in a country that had been Orthodox for
nearly two thousand years. What chance do we have in America,
which is almost pagan and not enlightened by Orthodoxy, if
advanced people in Greece are like that? *

4. Human Opinions

We have a friend on Mt. Athos who has been observing for many
years the situation in Greek monasteries. He goes to places
where, for example, someone has become a famous elder and has
many disciples. Having observed these elders, he often concludes
that the people are imagining and creating fantasies, just like
anyone else. They have opinions which they put into the air and
surround someone with them, and suddenly he becomes a "holy
elder" and they all flock to him. Actually, there is no
reason for thisthere are many holier people that they pay
no attention to. On Mt. Athos this can be seen in the case of an
elder named Theodosius, a very holy man who wrote a diary about
how he prayed the Jesus Prayer on a very advanced level. No one
knows anything about him, while everyone knows about certain
others because someone has "put them into the air" and
everyone follows that particular opinion.

Among us Western converts to Orthodoxy, this tendencyto
find an opinion someone has put into the air and begin to run
after itis very strong. This, however, is not what we
should be doing. We should be using our minds, trying to raise
our hearts to a level where we can feel more deeply about
Orthodoxy. It is required of us in these times to be extremely
discerning.

5. Recent Fathers

The pitfalls mentioned thus far, which in Greece have led to
schisms among people who have been Orthodox all their lives, are
caused by an absence of that which Kireyevsky was writing about
and trying to promote. The particular clergyman whom we know on
Mt. Athos, after observing all kinds of factions, fights,
"holy elders " and so forth among the Greeks, says that
there is something basic missing in them: they did not have, in
the 19th century, Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov and Bishop
Theophan the Recluse. [l]

These two figures were living witnesses of what Kireyevsky was
writing about. They were recent Orthodox Fathers in Russia who
were thoroughly steeped in the spirit of the Holy Fathers. They
spoke to people in the language of their times, a period very
close to our 20th century. All the temptations of our times were
known to them, especially to Bishop Ignatius, who read all the
Western writers, was himself an engineer and knew all the latest
theories of mathematics and calculus. Knowing the present
situation and the whole of modern Western wisdom, they set forth
the Orthodox teaching for these times and answered all kinds of
arguments. Bishop Ignatius, for example, wrote a volume on hell
and the state of the soul after death, elucidating Orthodox
teaching in a way that can be understood by Western man.[2] These
Fathers, as well as others who have read them and followed them,
hand down Orthodoxy to us in a very accessible way.

6. External Wisdom

If the authentic spirit of Orthodoxy is not transmitted to us
like this, there is a temptation for us to be following
"external wisdom," the wisdom of this world. We will
then, in coming to Orthodoxy, go after external things: good
icons, beautiful Church services according to the Typicon, just
the right kind of chanting, tithing, having beautiful
churches.... All these things are wonderful and good, but we can
approach them without placing first a warm, Christian heart and a
struggle with ourselves whereby we are made humble. If we neglect
this essential priority, then all these wonderful external things
can, as the philosopher Vladimir Solovyev describes, be put in a
museum of Orthodox antiquitiesand the Antichrist will love
this.

The Antichrist must be understood as a spiritual phenomenon.
Why will everyone in the world want to bow down to him? Obviously
it is because there is something in him which responds to
something in usthat something being a lack of Christ in us.
If we will bow down to him (God forbid that we do so!), it will
be because we will feel an attraction to some kind of external
thing, which might even look like Christianity, since
"Antichrist" means the one who is "in place of
Christ" or looks like Christ. In such a way we will entirely
lose our salvation, going after he who is in place of Christ, and
who will lead us away. The Antichrist can come, of course, only
after the whole world has heard of Christ; therefore, the final
choice is made between Christ and the Imposter, and almost the
whole world will follow after the Beast.

How do we keep from doing this, from following "external
wisdom"? We can be caught up in it, it should be noted, even
if we become caught up in exalted ideas. It is in the fashion now
to learn about the Jesus Prayer, to read the Philokalia,
to go "back to the Fathers." These kinds of things also
will not save usthey are external. They may be helpful if
they are used rightly, but if they become your passion, the first
thing you are after, then they become externals which lead not to
Christ, but to Antichrist.

If you get all excited about having the right kind of icons
and begin saying, "There's an icon of the wrong style in
your church! " you must check yourself and be more careful,
because you are again placing all your emphasis on something
external. In fact, if there is a church with nothing but icons of
the latest "approved" style, one might justifiably
regard it with suspicion. There is a case (one of many) in which
a church had old, original Russian iconssome good and some
in rather poor taste, painted in a relatively new styleand
a zealous person took them all out and put in new,
"traditional" style paper icon prints. And what was the
result? The people there lost contact with tradition, with the
people who gave them Orthodoxy. I they removed the original icons
which believers had prayed before for centuries.

An icon is first of all something to be prayed before. This
was once affirmed by Archbishop John (Maximovitch) [glorified as
a Saint in 1994 by the Russian Church Abroadwebmaster],
who was the president of a San Francisco icon society dedicated
to the restoration of old icons. One member, who was very zealous
for the old icon style, wanted the Archbishop to make a decree in
the diocese that only old style icons are to be allowed, or at
least to make a decision that this was the officially approved
position. In a way, this man's intention seemed good. Archbishop
John, however, told him, "I can pray in front of one kind
and I can pray in front of another kind of icon." The
important thing is that we pray, not that we pride ourselves on
having good icons.

So far we have been citing contemporary examples of
"external wisdom" in Orthodoxy, but there are
profitable illustrations of it in the past as well. One of these
is found in the spiritual counsels of Abba Dorotheos, a
6th-century desert Father from Gaza. "I knew a man, "
writes Dorotheos, "who came to a miserable state. From the
beginning, if one of his brethren said anything to him, he used
to say, 'Who is he? He is not Zosimas or one of his lot.' Then he
began to cheapen them and to say, 'There is no one of any
importance but Macarius,' and after a little while, to say, 'Who
is Macarius, anyway? There is no one any good, except perhaps
Basil or Gregory.' And then in a short while he began to debunk
them, saying, Who is Basil? Who is Gregory? There is no one who
counts but Peter and Paul.' And I said to him, 'Really, brother,
you are going to despise these soon.' And believe me, after a
short time he began saying, 'Who is Paul? Who is Peter? There is
no one but the Holy Trinity!' And so at last he lifted himself up
against Godand there he gave up!" [4]

This monk ended as he did because he began with self-love in
his heart and did not really want to change himself; he wanted to
follow after some kind of external thing. We see this same
attitude nowadays, expressed something like this: "Everybody
knows St. Symeon the New Theologian. Oh, yes! We'll run after
him. St. Gregory Palamas. Yes! Oh, he's all the rage! Yes! And
all the hesychast Fathers.... Hesychasm! and Jesus Prayer,"
and other advanced subjectsall this is on an external
level.

7. Being Linked with the Past

Such considerations should cause us to value even more the
Fathers of recent centuries (not that we should make them a
fashion, too!), who transmit Orthodoxy to us and teach us how to
soberly approach the Fathers of earlier times. We have to look at
ourselves: if we see that we have zeal for Orthodoxy and yet are
not "linked" with the line that goes back to Ignatius
Brianchaninov and Theophan the Recluse, there is a danger that we
might not be linked to all the Fathers. [5] There should be a
continuous line.

We may still find "ordinary" parish priests, some of
them from the Old World, who would never think of making schisms
and factions, or of excommunicating someone over questions of
strictness, who are extremely longsuffering, who often do not say
much and are therefore criticized or overlooked. These criticisms
are superficial: we ourselves must be looking deeper to find
something in these pastors and in the Church, something that is
not too obvious outwardly this very "link" with
the past.

You will not find many people who will explain it in detail
like this. You have to, wherever you might be, try to receive
those things which cannot necessarily be communicated in words.
These things are the very characteristics which come from a warm,
loving heart: longsuffering, patience, fervor (but not of such a
kind that it begins to be critical of others).

As soon as you begin making such statements as, "These
people aren't doing this as they should," you have to stop
and warn yourself. Even if it is trueas is often the case
to some degreethis critical attitude is a very negative
thing which will not lead you anywhere. In the end, it may get
you right outside the whole Church. Therefore, you have to
remember not to judge or think yourself so wise that you
"know better." On the contrary, try to learn, perhaps
without words, from some of those people whom you might be
critical of.

Our zeal and enthusiasm must be tempered by wisdom that comes
down to us through Ignatius Brianchaninov and Theophan the
Recluse, perhaps even through the simplest parish priest, in ways
which we have to be subtle and refined enough to discern, even if
we are not told.

8. Overcoming Hard-Heartedness

What Kireyevsky says is very important: we should start
developing within ourselves an Orthodox philosophy of life. It is
all there in the Holy Fathers, but we must have the right reason
for turning to them. You can open the Holy Fathers and have the
same problem you have with the Scriptures: you need someone to
interpret them because you find something unclear, or you don't
have the whole context, or you don't know how to understand what
one Father said as opposed to another Father and you think they
might disagree, and so on.

There can be a whole realm of confusion in the Holy Fathers,
and thus we have to approach them not with our ordinary
rationalistic minds. We must be trying to raise our minds up to a
higher level; and the way to do this is to soften the heart and
make it more supple. There are many examples in the Protestant
world where people have very soft hearts and are, out of love for
Christ, kind to other people. We should not, as Orthodox, think
that we can be hard and cold and correct and still be Christians.
This is not basic Christianity.

A pre-Christian philosopher in China named Lao Tzu taught that
the weakest things conquer the strongest things. There is an
example of this here at our monastery: the oak trees, which are
very hard and unbending, are always falling down and breaking
their limbs, while the pine trees, which are more supple, fall
down much less often before they are actually dead.

We can see the same thing in human life. The person who
believes in something so passionately that he will "cut your
head off" if you disagree with him, shows his weakness. He
is so unsure of himself that he has to convert you to make sure
that he himself believes. The contemporary forms of
"super-zealotry" in the Church which are propagated by
people who want so desperately to be on the right side, are in
fact bowed up with weakness and insecurity.

The need to be "right" is again on the external side
of Chritianity. It is important, but not of primary importance.
The first priority is the heart, which must be soft and warm. If
we do not have this warm heart, we must ask God to give it,
trying ourselves to do those things by which we can acquire it.
Most of all, we have to see that we have not got itthat
we are cold. We will thereby not trust our reason and the
conclusions of our logical mind, with regard to which we must be
somewhat "loose". If we do this, entering into the
sacramental life of the Church and receiving the grace of God,
God Himself will begin to illumine us.

9. Simplicity

Although all the perils we have mentioned may sound frightful,
they are actually not. The question is an extremely simple one.
Because we are so complex, with our modern, cold minds, we think
we have to find the answer some place and point it out with our
fingers. Complexity enters in when we think of ourselves as,
smart.

The one thing that can save us is simplicity. It can be ours
if in our hearts we pray to God to make us simple; if we just do
not think ourselves so wise; if, when it comes to a question
like, "Can we paint an icon of God the Father?" we do
not come up with a quick answer and say, "Oh, of course it's
this waysuch-and-such Council said so-and-so, canon number
so-and-so." And so either we, "knowing" that we
must be right, have to excommunicate everyone elsein which
case we have "gone off the deep end"or else we
have to stop and think, "Well, I guess I don't know too
much." The more we have this second attitude, the more we
will be protected from spiritual dangers.

Accept simply the faith you receive from your fathers. If
there is a simplehearted priest near you, give thanks to God.
Consider that because you are so complex,
"intellectual" and moody, you should be able to learn
much from him. The more you grow in Orthodoxy by reading and
exposure to Church and contact with Orthodox people, the more you
will be able to "feel your way" in the whole realm of
Orthodoxy. You will begin to see the wisdom behind things and
people you had dismissed before. You will begin to see that even
if the people who are the "links" to the past are not
consciously "wise," nevertheless, God is guiding the
Church. We know that He is with the Church until the end; there
is no reason to "go off the deep end," to fall into
apostasy and heresy.

If we follow the simple pathdistrusting our own wisdom,
doing the best that we can, yet realizing that our mind, without
warmth of heart, is a very weak toolthen what Kireyevsky
talked about will begin to happen: an Orthodox philosophy of life
will begin to be formed in us.

We are confronted with the same obstacles Kireyevsky faced,
only to an even greater degree. Living in the midst of Western
culture, we have to try to assimilate a philosophy and theology
which has come from almost 2,000 years ago and has become totally
estranged and foreign to the world. Our Orthodox philosophy must
not become part of some kind of cult or sect, but rather part of
our daily life. By taking one small step at a time and not
thinking that in one big leap we are going to get anywhere, we
can walk straight into the Kingdom of Heavenand there is no
reason for any of us to fall away from that.

Books by these two Fathers which have been translated
into English include: The Art of Prayer (Faber and
Faber), an anthology with many spiritual counsels by both
Fathers; The Jesus Prayer (John M. Watkins, 1952),
by Bishop Ignatius; The Arena (Holy Trinity
Monastery), by Bishop Ignatius; Unseen Warfare (St.
Vladimir's Seminary), revised by Theophan the Recluse; as
well as Early Fathers from the Philokalia and Writings
from the Philokalia on the Prayer of the Heart (Faber
and Faber), compiled and edited by Theophan the Recluse.
[Since this article was first published many more books
by St. Theophan have been published, most notably The
Path to Salvation and The Spiritual Life and How
to Be Attuned to It, both by the St. Herman
Brotherhood.webmaster].

Many passages from this volume were translated and
included by Fr. Seraphim in his book The Soul After
Death (St. Herman Brotherhood, Platina, CA).

A direct modern link with these Fathers was Archbishop
Averky of Jordanville (+ 1976). He was a disciple
of Archbishop Theophan of Poltava, who in turn was a
disciple of Theophan the Recluse.

St. Symeon the New Theologian expresses it this way:
"A man who does not express desire to link himself
to the latest of the saints (in time) in all love and
humility owing to a certain distrust of him, will never
be linked with the preceding saints and will not be
admitted to their succession, even though he thinks he
possesses all possible faith and love for God and for all
His saints. He will be cast out of their midst, as one
who refused to take humbly the place allotted to him by
God before all time, and to link himself to that latest
saint (in time) as God had disposed" (Writings
from the Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart, Faber and
Faber, London, 1979, p. 135).

This article was first published in The Orthodox Word, Vol. and issue No. unknown.